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#5: MYSTERY - Curator Jeffrey Whittle
Wednesday, July 7, 7-8 PM @ Cine Lab
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COCKTAILS & CARROTS
Bar Food, Part 1: Not only am I a fan of checking out the food
options at various bars, but I also really like eating at the
bar in restaurants that don't really emphasize it, like Five and
Ten. If you're only two people, it's just as easy to chat as it is
across a table, and you generally get far more attentive service
without too much chattiness. One of the best aspects of Farm
255 (255 W. Washington St.) has always been its beautiful bar,
which makes great use of the open space, so the restaurant's
introduction of a new bar-only menu designed to go along
with early-evening drink specials was a smart idea. As you'd
expect, the prices fall between Farm Cart's ridiculous cheapness
and the regular restaurant's higher tabs, and the offer of SI
Terrapin drafts between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. if you order some
thing off the bar menu may compensate for any slight flinching
from the cheapskates. You're unlikely to have a great deal of
difficulty choosing, as the options are limited to approximately
three, although you can still order anything'you like off the
main menu. The housemade sausage is a mainstay, served in
a Luna bun, with a side of perfectly salty rosemary fries, and
while the sausage itself could have a better texture (frequently |
the case with housemade stuff),
the bun compensates. A sirloin
and Caesar salad combo may well
disappoint if you're the type who
orders steak to begin with, offering |
a meager few slices of the stuff, already cooling, even if it is
only $8, the standard price for the bar entrees. The best of the
trio was an almost smokey tomato soup with a great swirl of
oil on the top, served with a buttery grilled cheese sandwich.
Sides from the main menu are a good way to pad out your meal
if you're still hungry, which you may well be, and while the
cheese grits were underwhelming, the griddled carrots, which
are just as simple, were totally lovely, with their essential car-
rotiness blossoming due to a quick application of heat Could
I live as a rabbit with such carrots? Indeed. On the whole, the
bar isn't exactly a dining destination on its own, but if your
alcohol tolerance is low enough that you could use some solid
nutrition to lay a foundation for several hours of drinking, it
makes one feel cheerful to have this food as an option.
Bar Food, Part 2: Since it opened, I've been meaning to poke
my head into the fancy boutique-on-the-cheap Hotel Indigo,
at the comer of College and Dougherty streets downtown, and,
as it happens, the place has a restaurant too. Phi Bar and
Bistro (500 College Ave.) is easy to find, being just around the
comer from the hotels entrance, and serves breakfast dinner
and drinks, but not lunch, an odd omission given the pres
ence of your choice of fruit cup or potato chips as a side with
entrees. You can sit at the long white bar, which features three
fiatscreen TVs, grab a shiny white table in the area in front
move to the back of the space for a loungier setting or check
out the very cool patio. As far as eats, you're better off stick
ing with the more bar-like nibbles. The Tuscan pizza is made *
with focaccia and has the usual faitings of that thick-crust
method, being soggy and difficult to eat The hickory-smoked
BBQ pork sliders are cute in presentation but flawed in execu
tion, with hard hunks of meat and an overly sweet sauce. They
are, smartly, served up on Luna rolls, as part of the hotel's
ethos is to emphasize and use local products. The Georgia
cheese and honey plate, with three selections from the won
derful Sweet Grass Dairy in Thomasvitte (a blue, a Gouda and a
Camembert-style) and a flowery bit of comb from Savannah's
Honey, is an example of such, and while I could nitpkk about
its lack of adventurousness, it's extremely tasty. If you're just
. having a beer, you could do a lot worse than to munch on the
fresh popped com dusted with chili powder and served in a
huge cornucopia of paper. The staff is attentive and friendly,
cheerfully offering to go get more bread for the cheese upon
noticing the included pieces had gone quickly, and the bar
tender mixes a solid dirty gin martini. Mi*h like the Farm Bar,
Phi Bar isn't a destination for its food, z.nd it's a bit out of the
way downtown, but it's a good step up irom the usual hotel
bar. The bar serves local wines from Tigi* and Wolf Mountain,
Terrapin beer and an array of specialty drinks that look to
be on the sweet side but do use nice ingredients such as St
Germain. Food is served every day and can, of course, be paid
for with a credit card.
ntlwry Brown footPffuagpoi6.com
...perfectly salty
rosemary fries...